Transformation Digital Art 2020 at LIMA, Amsterdam (19 & 20 March)

In performance and digital art, documentation has become the focus of conservation and presentation strategies. These artistic practices also challenge existing forms of documentation, resulting in new ways of thinking about documentation. What can be learned from other practices within and outside of the scope of the museum? Transformation Digital Art 2020 aims to show and discuss excising and new strategies for the documentation, transmission, and preservation of digital art for and by artists, curators and conservators.

Documentation — a work’s physical remnant or trace —is created and used in different ways, depending on its use, perspective and timing. First and foremost, from the moment the work is conceived, its documentation serves the artists and their collaborators. As its development progresses, the documentation targets an increasingly wide audience, playing an important role in the mediation, dissemination, contextualization and history of the artwork. Next, the documentation is used and expanded upon through a variety of actions and activities, such as the work’s installation, preservation and restoration. Also audiences are documenting and circulating images of these artworks and so documentation becomes part of identity construction. And ultimately, it is likely that documentation will survive the work, becoming its historical witness and sometimes supplementing any remaining fragments or relics.

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Publication date: 10 Mar '20